Stupid Things I Remember about Growing Up (Part 1 - Self indulgence, burnt cushions and a horrific knee injury)

In a futile attempt to avoid the vanity and self-importance associated with an autobiography, and fully aware that for years I have been posting many absurd childhood memories on this blog, I've decided to fill some time during this period of COVID-19-avoiding self-isolation by amusing myself (and possibly about 3 or 4 others) with some kind of self-indulgent chronological (and probably unreliable) narrative of (other) stupid things I remember about growing up.

Part 1 then.  Begin at the beginning.  My earliest memory?  Just an image of our front room in Flask Walk, Hampstead, when I was about 2 years old.  I can picture the caramel-brown settee we had there.  I'm told that I took a cushion from the settee and put it next to the electric fire, causing the vinyl on its underside to melt and burn.  I don't recall doing that.  But I remember the burnt cushion, as we kept the settee for several years afterwards.  Me and my brother would joke that someone had just sat on it and farted really badly, that's why it was all burnt and melted.  As you know, most of our humour revolved around farts, poo, bums and lavatories.

My next memory was moving into Bridge House in Chalk Farm (I was 3) and my Dad and Grandad struggling to get that brown settee upstairs to flat number 29.  They tried the lift, but I don't think it would fit.  I was scared of lifts in those days.  Justifiably, as they did often break down.  You'd have to wait to be rescued and you'd climb out of the opening where the bottom of the lift overlapped a bit with the external door, and you'd look underneath to see the lift shaft plummeting down into the dark and you'd believe it went all the way to Hell (thanks to a Catholic upbringing, but more of that later).

Around this time, possibly even slightly before, I have another memory of being told that my brother had just been born and we were to go to the hospital to see him.  I was hugely excited.  But unfortunately I was also at the top of a slide.  So instead of sliding down (which would have been too slow, as those slides sometimes were, you know, when there'd be too much friction and you'd stall and have to drag yourself down by pulling the sides) I unwisely decided to run down it.  I fell knee first onto the concrete at the bottom, cutting myself, but in my mind this cut was magnified into a huge flap of skin peeling off to expose a few square inches of flesh.  It was only the promise of an ice-cream that prevented me from continuing to wail as if in the throes of dying of crucifixion; but I suspect that in reality I had a graze on my knee.

For the next 3 years we lived in Bridge House, moving to flat 2 at some point and there is a whole load of stupid things I remember about that time; so I'll keep that for parts 2 onwards in order to keep this bite-sized enough not to bore you to oblivion...